SAN FRANCISCO — Seven pastors who work in the San Francisco Bay area and were barred from serving in the nation’s largest Lutheran group because of a policy that required gay clergy to be celibate are being welcomed into the denomination.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will add six of the pastors to its clergy roster at a service at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in San Francisco on Sunday. Another pastor who was expelled from the church, but was later reinstated, will participate in the service.

The Lutherans are taking steps to show that even while they preach tolerance and love, they haven’t always embodied it. And they are working to correct that.

Even the Midwest, a veritable bastion of Lutheranism, is joining in:

Two more rite of reception services are scheduled for September in the St. Paul-Minneapolis area and another will follow in Chicago

As a Lutheran I was brought up to accept all and never noticed that some were excluded from being Lutheran. When females were first accepted as clergy I had no problem. I had friends of other faiths who had a problem. I have always looked at it as “all have sinned and fallen short”… No matter what others may say I see no difference, gender, race, sexual orientation, they are all human. I would not go back to the days before women were accepted as pastors, they have given us so many gifts. Who am I to judge. God will decide. He was always with the most despised of his era, I expect to find Him there now also.